1. John Udell was an American farmer and Baptist lay preacher who is primarily known for two detailed diaries he kept of his travels to California across the Great Plains of the United States.
23 Facts About John Udell
1. 2.
John Udell traversed the overland route four times between 1850 and 1859, returning by sea on his first three trips.
3.
John Udell's second diary, Journal of John Udell, Kept During a Trip Across the Plains, was first published in 1859 and is an account of his last trip to California as a member of the Rose-Baley Party.
4.
John Udell emigrated to the United States in the late 17th century, settling in Stonington, Connecticut where he continued to practice as a physician.
5.
The young John Udell served as the cook and cabin-boy.
6.
In 1810, John Udell's father moved the family to the wilderness of northeastern Pennsylvania where he took up farming.
7.
John Udell would remain a devout member of the faith until his death, preaching to small gatherings and once marrying a couple on one of his westward wagon trains.
8.
The Udell family found it difficult to make a living from the farm in Pennsylvania and in early 1816, John Udell travelled to Ohio to seek a new home for his parents, eventually settling the family in New Lyme.
9.
John Udell was born in Connecticut, as were most of the early settlers of the town.
10.
John Udell then ran his own stills for another three years but later wrote of his decision to enter the distillery business:.
11.
John Udell made his first overland trip to California in 1850 to seek his fortune in the Gold Rush.
12.
When John Udell returned to Ohio after failing to make any money as a miner, they remained in California eventually settling in Allendale, a small town in Solano County.
13.
John Udell had to support himself there with a series of odd jobs.
14.
John Udell undertook his final overland journey to California in 1858.
15.
Several members of the party, including Leonard Rose, Gillum Baley, and John Udell, carved their names into the stone.
16.
John Udell managed to get a job there taking care of the US Army's livestock, and the following spring he and his wife set out again for California.
17.
Emily John Udell died in 1868 and is buried in Dixon Cemetery in Solano County.
18.
John Udell remarried in 1871 to Clarinda Anderson and moved to Healdsburg in Sonoma County.
19.
John Udell died three years later at the age of 79.
20.
John Udell is buried in Paskenta Cemetery in Tehama County, California where one of his daughters was living at the time of his death.
21.
John Udell appears as a character in the 1995 children's novel Sallie Fox: The Story of a Pioneer Girl.
22.
The book, based in part on John Udell's second diary, is a semi-fictionalized biography of Sallie Fox who as a twelve-year-old child had travelled with the Rose-Baley Party.
23.
John Udell survived both the Mojave attack which killed her stepfather and the trek back to Albuquerque during which her half-brother died.